UNLKE - End Titles... Stories for Film

Filmscore is one of my favorite genres so when UNKLE came out with this album, I was excited to say the least, but the lack of excitement from the community lead me to believe that this album was just an afterthought. This is strange considering that we only recently got More Stories, the B sides compilation associated with War Stories. The reality, however, is that More Stories was the afterthought. After all, it was only released in Japan and Australia, and it contains only two tracks (Heaven, Blade in the Back) that stand on their own.

End Titles... Stories for Film retains the gained/chorused rock sound that defined War Stories but it also returns to the more epic sense of it's predecessor, Never, Never, Land. There's a heavier use of strings and quite a few transition tracks such as Even Balance (Part 2) which has flowing feedback and vocals and serves to buffer the next, more fleshed-out piece, Trouble in Paradise. The latter finds UNKLE sampling from straight filmscore. The album is long too. With 22 tracks it clocks in at about 74 minutes. End Titles also relies even more on collaboration than others before it, and almost every track holds another artist's name.

I love End Titles, but it doesn't feel as well packaged as UNKLE's three other LP's. This could throw off the average listener who might be a bit overwhelmed by the shear content of the album. Not only that, but the ethereal sound of some tracks don't seem to fly with a many of my friends. Still, some, like Heaven, have gone over well. In the end, however, this is an album for UNKLE fans.